Vitamin B 17

The following text is an excerpt from the excellent book “Cancer Step Out of the Box” by Ty Bollinger. Reproduced here, with his kind permission.

When Dad died back in 1996, I began my cancer journey. The first alternative cancer treatment which I discovered was Vitamin B 17 , also known as Laetrile. I saw a video of a champion arm wrestler named Jason Vale who had been cured of cancer by eating the seeds from apples and apricots (which contain vitamin B 17 ) and read lots of good information on his website. The logic and science of how and why vitamin B 17 kills cancer cells was fascinating to me. Laetrile therapy is based upon the theory that cancer is a result of a nutritional deficiency combined with the trophoblast theory.

Vince Says
“This was one of the first alternative treatments that I tried, and unfortunately for me, it had little or no effect. I was eating upto 50 apricot seeds a day. Maybe I didn’t get enough pancreatic enzymes, maybe my diet was feeding the cancer. Whatever it was, it didn’t work for me.

In the 1940s, Dr. Ernst T. Krebs, Sr. and his son (Dr. E.T. Krebs, Jr.) and other doctors were involved in researching Beard’s thesis on the trophoblast theory of cancer, and they affirmed that he was correct. In 1949, the elder Krebs wrote a paper on the pregnancy toxemias and the role of the pancreas and trophoblast. The following year, Dr. Krebs and his son published a paper The Unitarian or Trophoblastic Thesis of Cancer , in the Medical Record (Vol. 163, No. 7, July 1950).

In the following years, the father and son team investigated co-enzymes and the possibility that cancer results from a vitamin deficiency disease. In the early 1950s, they theorized that cancer was caused by the lack of an essential food compound in modern-man’s diet, identified as part of the nitriloside family which is found in over 1200 edible plants. Krebs learned of the kingdom of Hunza in the Himalayan Mountains of Northern Pakistan, who were said to be “cancer-free.” Doctors Krebs knew that they ate huge quantities of apricots, but they did not believe that the fruit contained any cancer fighting substances. Until they learned that the Hunzakuts also eat the pits of the apricot seeds, which are one of the richest sources of nitrilosides!

Nitrilosides are especially prevalent in the seeds of apricots, peaches, apples, millet, bean sprouts, buckwheat, and other fruits and nuts, including bitter almonds. Dr. Krebs was able to extract certain glycosides from plants which contained nitrolosides, and eventually applied for a patent for the process of producing a metabolite form of these glycosides for clinical use. He named it “ Laetrile .” ( LAE -vo- mandeloni TRILE -beta-glucuronoside).

It took several years and actual clinical testing around the world before a model was proposed rationalizing the utility of Laetrile in the prevention as well as the treatment of cancer, when it received the name “ Vitamin B 17 .” Now, it is important to remember that a vitamin is a co-enzyme, which basically means that it must be associated with an enzyme in order for the enzyme to function optimally. We know that the pancreatic and other enzymes are reliant upon several essential co- factors and co-enzymes. Let’s remember this co-enzyme information as we learn a little bit more about the Hunzakuts.

The Hunzakuts consume between 100-200 times more B 17 in their diet than the average American, due mainly to eating the seeds of apricots and also lots of millet. Interestingly, there is no such thing as money in Hunza. A man’s wealth is measured by the number of apricot trees he owns. And the most coveted food is the pit of the apricot seed, one of the highest sources of B 17 on earth. Visiting teams of doctors found the Hunzacuts to be cancer free. One of the first medical teams to study the Hunza was headed by world-renowned British surgeon Dr. Robert McCarrison. Writing in the AMA Journal January 7, 1922, he reported: “ The Hunza has no known incidence of cancer. They have an abundant crop of apricots. These they dry in the sun and use largely in their food .”

But why haven’t you heard of vitamin B 17 ? It seems so simple! Well, the fact of the matter is that the Cancer Industry has suppressed this information and has even made it illegal to sell B 17 . Big Medicine has mounted highly successful “scare” campaigns based on the fact that vitamin B 17 contains quantities of “deadly” cyanide. This is patently false. Studies show that vitamin B 17 is harmless to healthy tissue.

Here’s why: Each molecule of B 17 contains one unit of hydrogen cyanide, one unit of benzaldehyde and two of glucose ( sugar ) tightly locked together. In order for the hydrogen cyanide to become dangerous it is first necessary to unlock the molecule to release it, a trick that can only be performed by an enzyme called beta-glucosidase, which is present all over the human body only in minute quantities, but in huge quantities at only one place : cancer cells.

Thus the hydrogen cyanide is unlocked only at the cancer site with drastic results, which become utterly devastating to the cancer cells since the benzaldehyde unit unlocks at the same time. The cancer cells get a double whammy of cyanide and benzaldeyhde! Benzaldehyde is a deadly poison in its own right, but when it teams up with cyanide, the result is a poison 100 times more deadly than either in isolation. The cancer cells are literally obliterated !

But what about danger to the rest of the body’s cells? Another enzyme, rhodanese, always present in far larger quantities than the unlocking enzyme beta-glucosidase in healthy tissues, has the ability to completely break down both cyanide and benzaldehyde into a thiocyanate (a harmless substance) and salicylate (which is a pain killer similar to aspirin). Interestingly, malignant cancer cells contain no rhodanese at all, leaving them completely at the mercy of the two deadly poisons. This whole process is known as selective toxicity, since only the cancer cells are specifically targeted and destroyed.

Now remember that I earlier referred to vitamin B 17 as a co-enzyme and said that this therapy is based, in part, on the trophoblast theory of cancer? The trophoblast theory focuses on the importance of pancreatic enzymes (trypsin, chymotrypsin, and amylase) to digest the protective coating around cancer cells. Here’s the connection between this theory and vitamin B 17 : In the presence of certain inhibitors in our blood, trypsin is inactivated and must be acted upon by hydrogen cyanide to become active again. On this basis, vitamin B 17 acts as a co- enzyme to trypsin, since it provides hydrogen cyanide, a harmless molecule, which reactivates the trypsin which is necessary to digest the protective coating of cancer cells. Fascinating, isn’t it?

The hundreds of clinical studies conducted by many competent physicians around the world, including those directed by Dr. Emesto Contreras at the Oasis of Hope Hospital in Mexico, give us complete confidence that B 17 therapy poses no threat to normal cells. This is bad news for the Cancer Industry. Apricot seeds are cheap…real cheap…not nearly as expensive as their latest chemotherapy drug cocktail.

The longest and most famous laetrile tests ever performed were run for nearly five years at the USA’s most prestigious cancer research center, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Dr Kanematsu Suguira, the preeminent cancer researcher in America, headed the team of researchers. At the conclusion of the trials, on June 15, 1977, they released a press statement. The press release read; “ Laetrile was found to possess neither preventative, nor tumor-regressent, nor anti- metastatic, nor curative anticancer activity .”

So that is it then, right? Wrong . When a journalist asked Dr. Sugiura “ Do you stick by your belief that laetrile stops the spread of cancer? ” He replied, “ I stick. ” He was then asked why Sloan-Kettering was against using laetrile to fight cancer. Sugiura answered “ I don’t know. Maybe the medical profession doesn’t like it because they are making too much money. ”

Dr. Lloyd Schloen, a biochemist at Sloan-Kettering, also performed test on laetrile, but he had also included proteolytic enzymes to his injections and reported 100% cure rate among his albino mice. This data had to be buried. Sloan-Kettering took action quickly. They performed their own tests which were designed to contradict Dr. Schloen’s findings. They then changed the protocols of the tests and amounts of laetrile to make certain that they failed. Not surprisingly, the tests failed, and that is what they reported. They couldn’t let the word out that laetrile had been proven to be a natural, effective cure for cancer. This would have spelled economic disaster for the Cancer Industry.

The most effective method of B 17 treatment has been six grams, intravenous once a day, usually given for three weeks. You should also add zinc , since it is the transportation mechanism for B 17 in the body. Biochemists and researchers have found that you can give massive doses of B 17 to a patient, but if the patient was deficient in zinc, none of the B 17 would get into the tissues of the body. Also important with B 17 therapy are pancreatic enzymes , which form the first layer of defense the body has against cancer. If you have a low supply of these digestive enzymes then it will be difficult for B 17 to work. Also, emulsified vitamin A is usually used as an additional supplement to B 17 therapy. And laetrile therapy is best used in conjunction with a very strict nutritional regimen, oftentimes with a raw foods diet. If you want to take B 17 as a preventative, Dr. Krebs suggested a minimum level of 50 milligrams per day for normal, healthy adult.

We purchase vitamin B 17 from Medicina Alternativa: www.tjsupply.com or CytoPharma: www.cytopharma.com . Over the past decade, we have purchased B 17 from both companies and both have proven to be reliable sources. A bottle of one hundred pills (100 milligrams per pill) is right around $20.

Lastly, here’s a b it of trivia: the bitter almond tree, a wonderful source of nitrilosides, was banned from the United States in 1995.